It's odd to read the story of an adult who believes they're a poor reader, still to this day apparently, because of what happened to them 30 years ago. Odder still that the article leaves itself the only conclusion of going all the way back to grade school and trying an entirely different strategy and hoping that just "works out" in the end.
The lack of "continuing education" in the era of the internet is baffling to me.
I think about this a lot, too. My academic interests are pretty broad, and I could improve in every subject, so why don't I? I think there are two reasons: a lack of focused effort, and the steadily increasing demands of adulthood.
I do reasonably okay at self-guided education when I want to, but there's definitely a difference vs. a structured secondary education environment, where there is accountability and other people to guide each other through the process. And, that's coming in to those subjects with already a better-than-average literacy and numeracy; I have to expect that for people who struggle with grade school reading comprehension or math, trying to bootstrap those abilities alone would be daunting.
Also, there's just less room for pursuing those now. Lots of people are getting squeezed by concerns that aren't part of most childrens' awareness -- housing costs, bureaucracy, the treadmill of maintaining all the machines that get us through daily life. Those add enormous pressure to dedicate more time towards professional development and "getting ahead", or at least not falling further behind, and that has been eroding all of the unstructured time that I would spend working my way through a textbook (or online class). People with poor literacy are probably more likely to have lower-paying positions, so all of those demands are even more severe.
Not that it's impossible. Lots of people do manage to self-educate their way out of poorer circumstances, and certainly the internet has made that far more accessible than it was before the turn of the century. But, let's not underestimate how challenging it is, either.
> My academic interests are pretty broad, and I could improve in every subject, so why don't I?
My suspected culprits:
1) The massively increased complexity of ordinary living is overconsumining our personal resources. and
2) For post-GenX and later, the erasure of childhood (free-roaming & peer-only hours) sabotages[1] the reward systems (joy) that supercharge early learning.
The less joy there is to facilitate learning, the more effort is required (from otherwise overly depleted resources).
Isn't the opposite true with regards to complexity of ordinary living? We've specialised so far that most people aren't required to or even capable of sewing their own clothes, hunting/growing/foraging their own food, building their own shelter and furniture. Something our great grandparents would find unbelievable.
Modern living is so monotonously boring and devoid of any challenge that people are find more and more creative ways to try and get an ounce of that physical and mental stimulation back in their lives (hobbies, exercise, gaming, etc).
To reinforce your point: I have dyslexic friends and family that have learnt to write over time. Very difficult, but they have learnt because they had to for high paying jobs.
One friend literally couldn't read. He took himself through adult reading courses. He ain't no Shakespeare, but I can now txt him and get a written reply.
Tech is helping, but the underlying reason for the change is their own initiative.
I would judge that none of the friends or family illiteracy was actually caused by our schooling system in New Zealand. Some people just struggle and our pedagogy will always be imperfect. Certainly I can see some failures in my own schooling that still exist and I would like to see fixed (mostly get rid of 99% of the deep crap).
>The lack of "continuing education" in the era of the internet is baffling to me.
It's all about incentives. That is companies are incentivised to give continuing entertainment for ad clicks, rather than building a world of the educated that may have a better all outcome for society (but probably not the ad companies at all).
she had known thant she has disease, so she can't read well when childhood. but the main point is why her normal daughter was taught same strategy by school.
The lack of "continuing education" in the era of the internet is baffling to me.